Ins Arihant, Indian Nuclear Submarine, Arihant Submarine

India’s first indigenously built nuclear-powered submarine will be launched at the Ship Building Centre here around noon on Sunday by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Christened INS Arihant – Ari means enemy and hant the killer – the 5,000-tonne submarine was for long referred to advanced technology vessel as part of a secret project lasting nearly 11 years; the time consumed for building the submarine, it is said.

Mr. Manmohan Singh’s wife Gurusharan Kaur is likely to break the coconut on the hull of the submarine, according to naval tradition where only a lady launches a warship.

Water from the harbour will flood the dry dock housing the submarine to launch it out of the dry dock.

Nuclear submarines are powered by nuclear reactor which generates terrible heat that drives a steam turbine which in turn rotates a propeller.

The launch of the submarine is said to put India in the exclusive league of five other nations capable of designing and building their own nuclear submarines.

China was said to be the last country to join the league in 1971. While the conventional diesel-electric submarines have to go up the surface to charge the batteries, the nuclear submarine has underwater endurance and could also travel at double the speed of conventional submarines.

Arihant is armed with nuclear-tip ballistic missiles and is estimated to cost well over Rs. 3,000 crore. After the launch, Arihant will be out of the naval dockyard and will commence a long series of trials in the harbour for the next few months to test its nuclear power plant and auxiliary systems before setting out into the Bay of Bengal for sea trials and much later, for weapon trials that form the last phase of the programme.

India had in the past leased from the erstwhile Soviet Union a nuclear submarine INS Chaka in 1987 and returned it in 1991.